A leading transport safety MP has called on the government to ensure that lorry drivers who regularly enter big cities should be given special urban driver training.
The call, by the Ruth Cadbury MP, the co-chair of the All Parliamentary Cycling Group, came in a series of question posed to the Transport Secretary – after HGV and cycle groups came together for the first time to jointly explore what would make our cities safer.
The pioneering roundtable was brought together by James Clifford, co-founder of HGVtraining.co.uk– the UK’s largest provider of HGV training – in an attempt to thaw the often frosty relationship between cyclists and lorries.
As well as calling for specialist urban driving training, the MP also asked the government what more could be done to investigate precise patters of road accidents more thoroughly (along the lines of Denmark) and incentive HGV firms to use to state of the art cycle-friendly lorries – which have lower driving positions and glass cabs.
As a direct result of discussions that took place during the roundtable, Ruth Cadbury MP submitted several questions to the Secretary of State for Transport. These include:
- Will steps be taken to amend road accident investigation procedures, to enable more data to be gathered about road accidents?
- Will steps be taken to incentivise road haulage businesses to purchase vehicles with (a) lower driving positions, (b) observation cameras, (c) glass doors and (d) other advanced safety measures?
- Will the government introduce a compulsory module on understanding the needs and risks of vulnerable road users to the Driver Certificate of Professional Competence syllabus?
- What steps are being taken to ensure that people who drive heavy goods vehicles in city centres receive training that specifically addresses the risks of urban driving?
The Department of Transport has now responded to all the above questions, providing information about existing and planned legislation – including new measures that have been implemented by 24 Police authorities to improve road accident data collection.
The questions and their responses can be found at Parliament.uk. Discussions are continuing to take place in and out of Westminster.
James Clifford, co-founder HGVtraining.co.uk and Chair of the Westminster roundtable says, “We are pleased to see that the Department for Transport is taking seriously the concerns held by both the cycling and road haulage community. By engaging the DoT in discussion on key issues such as reforming the Driver CPC and incentivising fleet operators to adopt advanced safety measures on their vehicles, we have taken the first steps towards improving road safety.”
